“Civilizations have always been pyramidal in structure. As one climbs toward the apex of the social edifice, there is increased leisure and increasing opportunity to pursue hapiness. As one climbs, one finds also fewer and fewer people to enjoy this more and more. Invariably, there is a preponderance of the dispossessed. And remember this, no matter how well off the bottom layers of the pyramid might be on an absolute scale, they are always dispossessed in comparison with the apex.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“The Solarians have given up something mankind has had for a million years; something worth more than atomic power, cities, agriculture, tools, fire, everything; because it's something that made everything possible (...) The tribe, sir. Cooperation between individuals.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“But he no longer feared the fear! It was not something to run from, that fear, but something to fight.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Victories over ingrained patterns of thought are not won in a day or a year.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“What was the first thing a man must do before he can be a man? He must be born. He must leave the womb; and once left, it could not be re-entered.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Mr Baley", said Quemot, "you can't treat human emotions as though they were built about a positronic brain".
"I'm not saying you can. Robotics is a deductive science and sociology an inductive one. But mathematics can be made to apply in either case.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“..."You wash your hands, don't you?"
Bayley's eyes dropped to his hands. They were as clean as need be. "Yes," he said.
"All right. I suppose it's a measure of instability to feel such revulsion at dirty hands as to be unable to clean an oily mechanism by hand even in a emergency. Still, in the ordinary course of living, the revulsion keeps you clean, which is good.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“A robot may do nothing that, to its knowledge, will harm a human being; nor, through inaction, knowingly allow a human being to come to harm.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Baley distrusted overstatement and had no liking for the armchair deducer who discovered certainty rather than probability in the workings of logic.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“It is as much my job to prevent harm to mankind as a whole as yours is to prevent harm to man as an individual.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“You lack the capacity to decipher this particular puzzle.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“If a robot can be manipulated into doing harm to a man, it means only that we must extend the powers of the positronic brain. One might say we ought to make the human better. That is impossible, so we will make the robot more foolproof.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“On Earth, we have a continuous influx of young people who are willing to change because they haven't had time to grow hard set in their ways. I suppose there's some optimum. A life long enough for real accomplishment and short enough to make way for youth at a rate that's not too slow.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Without the interplay of human against human, the chief interest in life is gone; most of the intellectual values are gone; most of the reason for living is gone.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Well, not the stuff they use in robotics, which I wouldn’t follow, but sociological relationships I can handle. For instance, I’m familiar with the Teramin Relationship.” “The what, sir?” “Maybe you have a different name for it. The differential of inconveniences suffered with privileges granted: dee eye sub jay taken to the nth——” “What are you talking about?”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Surely the relationship between inconveniences suffered and privileges granted was part of the very essentials of learning how to handle people without an explosion. A private”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Ah, the future good!” Leebig’s eyes glowed with passion and he seemed to grow less conscious of his listener and correspondingly more talkative. “A simple concept, you think. How many human beings are willing to accept a trifling inconvenience for the sake of a large future good? How long does it take to train a child that what tastes good now means a stomach-ache later, and what tastes bad now will correct the stomach-ache later? Yet you want a robot to be able to understand?”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Surely the relationship between inconveniences suffered and privileges granted was part of the very essentials of learning how to handle people without an explosion.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“The action of social revolution and the reaction of guarding against such revolution or combating it once it has begun are the causes of a great deal of the human misery with which history is permeated.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“What phrase was that, sir?” “You said something about interviewing people face to——” He shook his head, his tongue dabbing quickly at his lips. “I would rather not say it. I think you know what I mean. The phrase conjured up the most striking picture of the two of us breathing—breathing one another’s breath.” The Solarian shuddered. “Don’t you find that repulsive?” “I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of it so.” “It seems so filthy a habit. And as you said it and the picture rose in my mind, I realized that after all we were in the same room and even though I was not facing you, puffs of air that had been in your lungs must be reaching me and entering mine. With my sensitive frame of mind——” Baley said, “Molecules all over Solaria’s atmosphere have been in thousands of lungs. Jehoshaphat! They’ve been in the lungs of animals and the gills of fish.” “That”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Baley’s lips twitched. He had guessed that in some ways robotic logic must fall short and he was convinced of it now. As the roboticist had said: Logical but not reasonable.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
“Baley tried to picture a world as a sphere being lit and unlit as it turned. He found it hard to do and felt scornful of the so-superior Spacers who let such an essential thing as time be dictated to them by the vagaries of planetary movements.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from The Naked Sun
Isaac Asimov
Born place: in Petrovichi, Russian Federation
Born date January 2, 1920
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“He had destroyed her, so why couldn't she destroy him in return?”
― Linda Howard, quote from Cry No More
“Oh, I woke up on this bayou,
Got a chain around my heart.
Yes, I'm sitting on this bayou,
Got a chain tied 'round my heart.
Can't you see I'm dyin'?
Can't you see I'm cryin'?
Can't you throw an old dog a bone?
Oh, I woke up, it was rainin',
But it was tears came fallin' down.
Yes, I woke up, it was rainin',
But it was tears came fallin' down.
Can't you see I'm tryin'?
Can't you hear my cryin'?
Can't you see I'm all alone?
Can't you throw this old dog a bone?”
― Kathi Appelt, quote from The Underneath
“It kind of freaked me out. Because I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of thing yet.” Or maybe the problem was that I wasn’t prepared for how ready I was…
“Ready for-?” He broke off, and then frowned as if it had all become clear. “Wait.” He dropped his arms from around my waist and took a step away from me. “You think I spent the night wit you?”
“Didn’t you?” I blinked back at him. “There’s only the one bed. And…well, you were in it when I woke up.”
Thunder boomed overhead. It wasn’t as loud as the violent cracks that had occurred in my dream. Although the rumbles were long enough-and intense enough-that the silverware on the table began to make an eerie tinkling sound.
And my bird, who’d been calmly cleaning herself on the back of my chair, suddenly took off, seeing shelter on the highest bookshelf against the far wall.
I realized I’d just insulted my host, and no joke was going to get me out of it this time.
“For your information, Pierce,” John said, his tone almost disturbingly calm-but his eyes flashed the same shade as the stone around my neck, which had gone the color of the metal studs at his wrists-“I spent most of last night on the couch. Until one point early this morning, when I heard you call my name. You were crying in your sleep.”
The salt water I’d tasted on my lips. Not due to rain from a violent hurricane, but from the tears I’d shed, watching him die in front of me.
“Oh,” I said uncomfortably. “John, I’m so-“
It turned out he wasn’t finished.
“I put my arms around you to try to comfort you, because I know what this place can be like, at least at first. It’s not exactly hell, but it’s the next closest place to it. You wouldn’t let go of me. You held on to me like you were drowning, and I was your only lifeline.”
I swallowed, astonished at how close he’d come to describing my dream…except it had been the other way around. I’d been his lifeline; only he’d let go of me, sacrificing himself so that I could live.
“Right,” I said. “Of course. I’m sorry.” I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been, especially since my mother had always worried so much about my talking in my sleep. On the other hand, I had been upfront with him about my lack of experience when it came to men. “But this is good, see?” I reached out to take his hand. “I told you I could never hate you-“
He pulled his hand away, exactly like in my dream. Well, not exactly, because he wasn’t being sucked from my grasp by a giant ocean swell. Instead, he’d dropped my fingers because he was leaving to go sort the souls of the dead.
“You will,” he assured me, bitterly. “You’re already regretting your decision to-what was it you called it? Oh, right-cohabitate with me.”
“No,” I insisted. “I’m not. All I said was that I want to take things more slowly-“
That had nothing to do with him-it had to do with me and my fear of not being able to control myself when he was kissing me. It was too humiliating to admit that out loud, however.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Underworld
“I remember your parents' funeral, JJ. It was the hardest one I'd ever done in my career... I didn't think I was going to make it through the service, but I looked out and saw you, JJ, standing there in the pew. Your eyes were dry. Your chin was up. I saw such strength. I wondered what your parents did that made you so strong at such a young age. But then I noticed you were holding Phillip's hand tightly, just like you are now, and I knew where all that strength came from. It's from each other. You get strength from each other. Whatever you face in life, I hope you face it like you are now. Han in hand. United. If you do that, you'll make it. You'll have a wonderful marriage.”
― Jillian Dodd, quote from That Wedding
“How are you doing this?" I continued, frowning at him. "And if you say 'I am a cat.' I swear I will throw you off this balcony.”
― Julie Kagawa, quote from The Iron Legends
Taken at Dusk
The Winter Rose
A Lick of Frost
On Beauty
Down London Road
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